The villains of the MCU are pretty lousy aren't they?

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't go to these movies with critic goggles on. I'm not expecting some deep plot or some villain with a tragic backstory and compelling motives. I'm going to have fun, watch some action, and have a few laughs.

You don't need a tragic backstory to have a good villain. The Joker even made fun of that in The Dark Knight.

"The villains define a good story" blah blah blah. Thank you Ebert. Don't care.

You can thank Ebert and anybody else who has ever given a moment's serious thought to dramatic weight and unity in a narrative structure. "Fun" and "good" aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

 

[Ishal]

I don't go to these movies with critic goggles on. I'm not expecting some deep plot or some villain with a tragic backstory and compelling motives. I'm going to have fun, watch some action, and have a few laughs.

You don't need a tragic backstory to have a good villain. The Joker even made fun of that in The Dark Knight.

"The villains define a good story" blah blah blah. Thank you Ebert. Don't care.

You can thank Ebert and anybody else who has ever given a moment's serious thought to dramatic weight and unity in a narrative structure. "Fun" and "good" aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

I still don't see the problem.

Loki was good, Stain was OK, looks like Ronan is going to be OK, and Thanos seems like he's going to steal the show in Avengers 3. Ultron depends on a few things, but I have faith that he'll be cool, too.


No, fun and good aren't mutually exclusive, but it does seem like fun = good is what's been driving the MCU into the stratosphere these past few years. Meanwhile, the DCU seems to be floundering in the dirt, ignoring these concepts. Movies that are widely regarded to be lackluster except for one. But hey, villains sure were great.

 

[Fairly Chaotic]

I believe the problem of MC villains in general, whether on the screen or the page, is that they aren't shown being bad. The audience is only told that this guy is the bad guy. Sometimes they are even told why. Honestly, that is not good enough. For me, when I was watching The Dark Knight I was wondering what the Joker was going to do next. He did things. He spent the movie doing things and I got to see those things. He had his motivations and the audience gets to see him act on them.

Furthermore, I believe Marvel villains suffer from too much ambition. DC has some of those villains but they aren't the most interesting (Darkseid is cool, I guess). Most of them are "I need mcguffin to take over/destroy the world!" Everyone has read and seen that type of story several times. The hero(s) are of course going to stop that so the audience isn't going to see it. So instead all you see is a villain barking at minions and biding their time until they lose. You hardly see them do anything because the only they want to do is going to be stopped.

 

[jademunky]

I think part of the problem is that Marvel Studios is a bit hamstrung on which villains they are actually allowed to use simply for legal reasons.

- Can't use Norman Osborne because he's part of the Spider-man mythos.
- Ditto, I think, for the Kingpin
- No Galactus or Dr. Doom due to them being owned by Fox
- No Deadpool, also owned by fox (not a villain really but still)
- No villains like Juggernaut/Magneto/Apocalypse

Oh i see others have already beaten me to the punch.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The whole MCU is basically running off the B and C list of characters.

Y'know, the ones no-one actually cared enough to license back when Marvel was trying to get cash by selling off the family jewels like the X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four and especially Spider-Man.

So they sold off all the good villains as well. Leaving them with also ran shit like Iron Man's villains, the main one of whom is essentially a massively racist generic yellow peril Fu-Manchu ripoff. And other than him no-one gives a shit about any of Iron Man's villains, which is why they're such small parts of his own movies whilst he wrestles with his own self destructive tendencies.

Likewise Thor. Thor is a fucking nobody, name two Thor villains that aren't Loki? And I'll even give you Enchantress for free.

Captain America hardly even has villains to call his own, in the movies he has to borrow Hydra, originally Nick Fury's nemesis! (Not that they tried hard with Red Skull, he's so evil he's a double Nazi, 100% characterisation achieved!)


That's why the MCU is running on also ran villains, because it's running on heroes that no-one gives a fuck about in the first place. The really iconic Marvel antagonists are all either X-Men, Fantastic Four*, or Spider-Man.



* PS: It always turns out to be Doom in the end.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

That's why the MCU is running on also ran villains, because it's running on heroes that no-one gives a fuck about in the first place. The really iconic Marvel antagonists are all either X-Men, Fantastic Four*, or Spider-Man.

You've got a point there, I can name dozens of villains between X-Men and Spider-Man, yet every other Marvel hero seems to stick to the same villain, and in the MCU's case most of them are either worn or dead at this point.